Jojobobo

You could always use the Helwax Mold to dupe Resolution, you miss out on the endurance gain but I doubt you're building your Rogue to take a lot of hits anyway.

I got mine in Zolla's stash in the Endless Paths, not sure what day it was for anyone looking to replicate, I heard they changed the loot tables around with new patches so old info is likely incorrect. If you were looking to get yourself a pair, Caed Nua would allow you to easily rest until the correct day.

What is considered "good" for end game defenses on a solo tank? From what I can tell my end game defenses will be something along the lines of deflection ~130, fortitude ~120, reflex ~105 and will ~99. Are the reflex and will scores good enough for some of the big bosses (adra/alpine, etc.), with a little scroll buffing, or should I dedicate some talents to Snake's Reflexes/Bull's Will? I'm not a big fan of respec-ing (not disparaging anyone who is), and though I'll probably make a save close to when I want to take a crucial level where I may/may not get these talents (so I can re-load and pick different talents if needs be) I'd rather know now what the best course of action is to take. Thanks in advance.

Maybe I'll leave it at 9 then, thanks for the tip.

If you're tanking with your Rogue and on a higher difficulty (which makes sense if you're using Retaliate as you have to take hits), it's nice to have that steady trickle of damage and it allows you to kill weaker enemies automatically after a little bit of time. I'm still stun-locked by Phantoms on my solo play, but Deep Wounds and Retaliation kills them pretty easily - one of the many uses. On regular Rogue builds however you're right - it can be not overly great.

Probably a stupid question, but that's 13 without Gloves of Manipulation isn't it? I just found those bad boys, and I'm keen to start levelling stealth, so if I could just put one more point into Mechanics (it's 10 already) that would be great.

Pretty much the title, they're all covered by pink rectangles. Mac v3.01. Here's a save: http://www.filedropper.com/716516f73f374af18407189ec466766028634228crgholdtbluffs

I'm hoping to get 5 damage for Deep Wounds eventually, not sure if it's possible but I'll wait and see. I don't seem to have really suffered for leaving PER at the base of 10 so far, so I think the build is fairly solid, and the drop to reflex from low DEX is somewhat counter-acted by the Weapon and Shield Style which adds shield deflection to reflex. I'll try your shield choices and see how it works, currently I'm running Larder Door as I'm not even close to act II yet which is nice as it gives you an extra chance for your per encounter attacks to land. I'll also look into Bittercut, and some other of the physical damage spell items you mentioned. Would you say that Backstab + Shadowing Beyond > Snake's Reflexes + Bull's Will then? As I mentioned, my reflex is boosted quite a lot by using a large shield despite my low DEX and my will benefits from my high RES (to give you an idea of how much Weapon and Shield Style benefits reflex, currently my reflex and will are equal - with nothing else boosting reflex apart from an exceptional Larder Door) - so I wasn't sure if the resistance talents might be overkill. Backstab + Shadowing Beyond would also make something like the Silver Flash a beast. Would also you recommend me getting both Dirty Fighting and Vicious Fighting? 20% hit to crit rate sounds pretty beastly, which is why I'm interested. I'm not too bothered about Deathblows, it seems like too much hassle to get working (it seems like the main way is Shadowing Beyond + other per encounter, but my INT is super high so they tend not to last long), especially seeing as I attack so slowly. I'll give some a watch, thanks for the tip. What I've listed is pretty successful if you want to give that a try, I'm pancaking a lot of enemies right now due to Retaliation and Deep Wounds (the biggest pain is of course getting Hiro's Mantle - fortunately for me it was the first item Azzuro offered, then again he was the last dilemma I could get at Caed Nua, so I feel like I deserved it). As I said I'm mainly just looking to optimise now, hence the questions. High mechanics is pretty much a must early game for a Rogue, it allows you to get to Raedric only having to kill 2 people on the rooftop nearest the vines (thus getting XP even if you don't want to kill him) and do Buried Secrets (for the one Phantom you have to fight, you can use an Ooze to block the door and then hit him with a staff/ranged weapon so he doesn't stun lock you) fairly trivially. Once you're at level 4, doing Caed Nua isn't too bad. If you use Rymrgand's Mantle and a staff you can lure one Shadow to the left of the stairs blocking the path of the Phantoms, allowing you to tank hits from the Shadow and kill the Phantoms with a staff/ranged weapon as before (hint, kill Durance). Maerwald is easy by just luring him into one of the other rooms with all the monsters there, and once you hit Defiance Bay things really start to open up in terms of you getting much more XP.

So I've made a tank Rogue solo on POTD, using Riposte and Retaliation with Deep Wounds. So far it's going okay, Retaliation/Riposte with high deflection and Deep Wounds is a great means of crowd control with plenty of enemies dying from just attacking me - and Rogues have plenty of means to inflict conditions for a sneak attack and get good damage. All that said, I wasn't too sure on my final talents/abilities, here's what I have so far: 1 - Crippling Strike 2 - Weapon and Shield style 3 - Reckless Assault 4 - Vulnerable Attack 5 - Deep Wounds 6 - Deflecting Assault 7 - Blinding Strike 8 - Superior Deflection 9 - Riposte Now on 10 I'm definitely taking Cautious Attack, but what would your recommendations be for 11/12/13/14/15/16 be? I maxed Con and Might, dumped Dex and maxed Resolve - so I was thinking for the talents maybe just getting Bull's Will and Snake's Reflexes to shore up my reflex and will to the same level as my fortitude as well as getting Vicious Fighting for extra damage. Ideally I want to do as many of the horrible boss fights (Adra/Alpine Dragon/Kraken) as possible - so are there better talents to be taking for these two? For my abilities, I was thinking Withering Strike and Sap due to more sneak attacks as well as Dirty Fighting for extra damage, do these sound good? I wasn't sure whether to get Adept Evasion to get many more misses on attacks targeting Reflex, or if Feign Death can be used to get out of combat for situations where I've taken out about half a mob but want to take a breather - however I wasn't sure if the mechanics worked like that. Also, what's the best armor for going solo? Originally I was going to go Argwes Adra, but I noticed Second Chance took a heavy nerf so I wasn't sure if there wasn't a better option. I currently have Hiro's Mantle, but thought I might be able to wear the Coat of Ill Payment and instead use a different cloak/amulet. Laslty, what's the max mechanics skill needed to open everything up now? I'm not keen on spamming chests to find Gloves of Manipulation, if I find them I find them and if I don't I don't - but I still don't want to overshoot mechanics but a large margin pointlessly. Thanks in advance, if the character goes well I'll do a class build for it and make sure to credit any good suggestions I get here. Also if you think my current ideas are solid, feel free to say so and I'll carry on as is.

Sounds good, is him "visiting" different to him selling his goods then? Are they two separate events, one where he visits to trade and one where he visits to, well, visit? I also noticed, though I don't have a save for it, that other visitors didn't appear in the keep when they were visiting (I think it was the Saint's War Hero, not that it matters seeing as you don't need to talk to them again after their dilemma is solved, but I thought it might be related).

I think it's a good idea, it's annoying not only for the reasons of having to select the same options again if you want to keep your role-play consistent but it also kills the impact of said dialogue by hearing it over and over again (Maerwald is a pretty great example of this). A save just before the fight and right after the dialogue would be perfect.

I didn't solve his dilemma with copper, and I'm having the same problem. Here's a mac save: http://www.filedropper.com/716516f73f374af18407189ec466766025458943woodendplains v3.01. It's not a quest as in a quest that goes in your journal, it's just when he approaches you about his problem with bandits. That is what you're supposed to complete for him to start showing up at your stronghold and selling stuff, however it seems like he's missing in a lot of peoples saves when the stronghold log says he should be there.

You mean Heodan can't do that anymore? ... Never realised he could, lol. Will watch out for that in the future.

Just to confirm, there isn't a special way to complete his dilemma is there? I presume there is a money related option that would have been present if I had the gold, however I didn't so I went for the saying people should open supply lines. This isn't going to make him irritated is it, so he won't show up and trade? I've kept a save before he showed up in case this is the case and I need to go and get more funds. Took about an hour to get the guy to show up, me having a fully upgraded Caed Nua. Random event rolls are completely random every time (sounds like a stupid thing to say, but what I mean is if you save near the bed in Bright Hollow the rolls don't become fixed upon saving in a certain area, if that makes sense), so just save by the bed in Bright Hollow and get ready for the ride of your life as you ceaselessly rest again and again and again. It helps if you have a good amount of gold for your security's wages. Not sure what turn I am (it's not on the the stronghold feed with me chain resting so much, and I don't know what other way to check it) but I've only done about half the Defiance Bay side quests and only the first Defiance Bay main quest, so presumably not too high a turn.

Pretty much the topic, I've hung them both but they keep showing up at Caed Nua. It would be nice if they could be taken off the list of random people showing up after killing them, not only for consistency, but also to increase the likelihood of someone else showing up (I'm still waiting on Azzuro).

Something else that isn't really an option, but I feel like should be in the game, is a timer for the item summons - which as far as I can tell there isn't. It would make combat that little bit more manageable, as you could potentially time your second summon perfectly so you have a constant stream of them - or at the very least you're not caught short when you think you have time to squeeze in the animat's healing but just miss out.

I'm playing a solo Rogue on POTD and it's working well so far, I'm level 5 (about 100 XP off level 6) in Defiance Bay. I'm playing a tank rogue, which may sound crazy but I'm building towards Deep Wounds with high deflection for Riposte and also with Hiro's Manlte for Retaliation (they hit and I hit and inflict DW, they miss and a lot of the time I hit for DW). Early game, high Mechanics is an absolute must, in the tutorial section you can disable all the floor traps for a lot of early XP and high Mechanics (without going into spoilers) allows you to complete/get to late stage in many quests which you wouldn't be able to normally. You need to remember that not all areas need to be completed really early game. I think I will be able to Anslog's Compass now as Xaurip Skirmishers can't paralysis lock me so effectively anymore, but this is a prime example of picking and choosing your fights - leave more tricky early game quests until later when you can cope with them. I'd imagine with a full party many of the problems I'm having would be easily resolved.

I think they probably released the game a little too early in hindsight, as a fair few of the classes got a big shake up and these things could have been resolved through more beta testing. However at the same time I appreciate they couldn't **** around so many backers for what seemed like forever, and obviously there always a few more bugs noticed when you take things alpha in any case. From my experience, the game seems really polished now. My laptop broke during the late v1 patches, and once it was fixed I thought I'd take a break until the full White March expansion was released (i.e. now). I've noticed lots of little really nice tweaks, such as making drugs useful, touching up a lot of the items to makes them more useful, introducing balance tweaks like item summon durations (a little harsh, but certainly not giving players an extra boost so I'm okay with it) which all seem to work really well. With this level of polish, the game now does feel very much like a classic to me - which I maybe wasn't feeling on the game's release. What I want now is for Obsidian to bring this high level of balance to PoE sequel, as well as some innovation, without a load of patching. I think they're now capable of it, and I really want to see them have this kind of success without some many player gripes out of the gate.

Cool, thank you.

Just to check, Hiro's Mantle hasn't changed has it? Last time I played the game was pre-2.0, and I've noticed a lot of items have changed since then, so I wanted to make sure it still had retaliate as it's integral to one of my builds.

Are the creatures summoned through items now limited in duration through a patch, or am I just encountering a weird bug? I'm trying to solo as a rogue and want to use them for flanking, but the animat seems to disappear very quickly (having not suffered any damage) which is making it problematic to kill that first rooftop guard at Raedric's Hold and so break into the castle. EDIT: Just checked in game, I was a bit rusty on how to do it hence the question. Apparently they do now have a limited duration, which is crazy especially when it's only 20 seconds for the animat - that's barely enough time to use both its knock down and healing (and I thought the point of it's healing was to heal itself primarily though you can use it on the player, 20 seconds isn't even enough time for it to accrue any damage). Though summons are useful in regular play, they were a massive help playing solo due to them introducing flanking. Now it seems they're borderline useless, especially if they're all just 20 seconds now (even 30 seconds would make it slightly useable, 20 seconds is way too short). Maybe they're longer when you're not on PotD? Still seems like madness, and not something that really needed balance though a patch.

You can just use something with Retaliate to re-apply Deep Wounds, I've got a tanky rogue going solo currently and it's what I use (with max Per for more tankiness). Though Int does affect the duration of Crippling/Blinding Strike, honestly if you keep it at 10 then they will still last for 10 seconds on a Hit which is pretty long; plus as long as you're flanking an enemy (using figurine summons or party members if not solo) you get sneak attack damage so only 10 seconds is not the end of the world. Still, I wouldn't recommend dumping Int entirely.

Cool, thanks.

I was hoping to get a Rite of Youthful Spirits scroll for a check talking to the Ogre for that Dyrford Village quest, but I can't seem to find one? Any ideas or can the only be found in chests?

I heard somewhere it's 12 for the Endless Paths, so if you get Gloves of Manipulation (you can use the loot lists someone posted up to determine what loot you're going to get from what chest on what day) then you'll need 10.